Kako sits patiently by the window, waiting for the sun to rise.

Teyla says that all life is governed by light and darkness.

Papa says not to wake him at such and ungodly hours, especially if he's not baring coffee and please why won't the little hellion let him sleep?

Kako prefers Teyla's reasons.

The stars hang luminous in the night sky. Sometimes Kako lies back on the balcony for hours and hours, watching for the creatures that appear there, between the dots. Most of the time they dance, waving down at him with wide smiles. Their music is unlike anything Kako has ever heard before. Every once and a while they hide beneath a stormy cloak, playing the concerto of locked doors and muffled laughs that Dad and Papa play sometimes. A duet for two voices.

Kako likes the stars. Even when they are not nice, they are quiet.

Atlantis holds the names for them, but she lets him make up his own stories.

Dad always wakes when the first hint of drawn cracks just above the horizon, entering with all the bombast of Tschovsky as it slides onto the stage, conquering the serenity of the stars, even as they wink to him goodbye.

Papa says that Pachelbel plays the music of sunrise, but Pachelbel when plays, Kako sees the waves and their perfect curve, the loving way the strain up in search of the moon.

Dad puts on his black shirt – always black, and his sea-blue sweat pants. He ties his shoelaces to the right – double knots. Kako ties his own to the left – always to the left. He wears a gray t-shirt and woven blue pants. They are plain, even colors that fade harmlessly into the background.

Kako folds his night-clothes and slips them beneath his pillow, then brushes his teeth – one hundred circles rubbing mint deep into his gums, a little percussion to start the day. Then he checks Dad's hair. Dad's hair is untrustworthy. Each day, when Kako wakes, it is arranged differently.

Dad kneels down and Kako rearranges it. Only after the sharp spikes are evened out, balanced against each other in the perfect pattern, complex, but predictable, like the waves, does Dad open his arms, waiting for Kako to embrace him. Some days, when there are dark circles under Dad's eyes, a shifting intensity in his muscles, Kako shies away. Bethoveen in his last days.

Teyla says, ‘your father, too, is a creature of the night.'

Today is a good day, and Dad's eyes are soft and laughing, airy like Liszt. He squeezes Kako to him tight.

When the door opens, Ronon is waiting for them there. Other children find Ronon frightening, but Kako does not. He is exactly 2.26 meters tall, .71 wide, but other than that, Kako does not note his size. His hair is arranged in simple blocks and when he speaks, his words are a low rumble like the crash of the surf against the shore, a bass, the perfect accompaniment.

Whenever he sees Ronon, Kako rushes forth to embrace him. Kako can remember a time when he came up to only Ronon's thigh. Now he is at Ronon's navel. It is Kako's own body that has betrayed him, not Ronon.

‘Ronon is loyal' Teyla says. Teyla is loyal too. Sometimes he shows her this. It makes her smile.

Kako runs until the first transporter on the route to the east pier. Ronon and Dad jog beside him. It takes Ronon exactly 1,237 strides every single time, Dad between 1,543 and 1,599. Today, it takes Kako 3,459. Tomorrow it will take him one less, the day after that one less. He does not know what he will do when he gets it down to zero.

At the first transport, Ronon kneels and lets Kako ride on his back.

One day, Dad warns, Kako will grow too big for him to do this. It's okay. He should have made it to zero by then.

At the second transporter, they drop Kako off. He takes it back to their apartment, prepared to wake Papa.

Papa always sleeps on his stomach, arms flat at his sides, head turned toward the space in the bed that Dad usually inhabits. His hair is 2.5 centimeters long and does not change shape, other than to crawl slowly away from volatile danger of his eyebrows. Other than this, he is unpredictable.

Today, it takes three gentle shakes and one forceful one for Papa to wake.

"Hm? What? Oh my god, are we all going to die?" he says, rubbing a wince into his face with his left hand. "Coffee?"

Kako has the cup already waiting by the bedside. Papa is more predictable once he has had his coffee.

"Did you have a good run?"

Kako nods.

"Oh, well, that's good. I just have to check something on my laptop and then we can shower, hm?"

Kako has long ago learned not to cry at Papa's unpredictability, though he will never trust him enough for a hug. He retreats to the balcony with Pachalbel and the waves.

Today Dad returns before he and Papa can shower. He smells strongly of sweat, but strides in to put his arms around Papa's shoulders anyway, kissing him on the same place on the cheek every morning, regardless of whether or not Papa has had a shower.

"Get your sweaty hands off me," Papa's voice is the violin, the high whining melody that leads the symphony.

Another kiss, to the lips this time. "You like my sweaty hands." Dad is a cello. Not as low as Ronon, nor as constant - versatile, capable of melody, but just as well suited to play counterpoint.

"Maybe," Papa replies, but his eyes are dark with shadow. He is a creature of neither the night nor the day. "Why don't you shower with Kako? I'm just about to figure something out here and if I just . . ."

"No. Rodney, you have to."

"Why? He likes you better anyhow."

Dad shakes his head and sighs, squeezing Papa's shoulder. "Please."

"Fine, fine, but you know we're talking about galaxy-saving work here, right? I mean, seriously . . ."

"Rodney."

"Fine."

Dad shakes his head, sitting down at his desk and turning his computer on.

Kako follows Papa, slow and careful, watching him with a wary eye.

Kako unties his right shoe then his left. His pants, then his shirt, then his underwear are removed and then folded into perfect squares.

Papa gets stuck in his shirt. Kako does not help.

The shower is warm at exactly 53 Helos. Atlantis tells him this.

They step inside and Papa washes himself. He hums Mozart's Rondo Al Turca and the water drops cascade in harmony.

Kako smiles his thanks to Atlantis. Papa mistakes the smile for him and smiles back. Kako does not correct him.

When they have dried themselves and Dad is taking his turn in the shower, Papa packs up his laptop and asks, "What do you say we see what's being served in the mess, eh?"

It's scrambled eggs and deka cake muffins with Sip'a bacon and lef juice because today is the first Thursday after the beginning of the month in the fall season when the lef grow ripe on the mainland. Saturday, Dad has said, once every morning since the beginning of the week, they will take a Jumper to the mainland to help Teyla's people to pick the lef, ruby red, plump beneath their fingers, turning their tongues purple as they bite into them.

Last year, Kako spent the entire harvest studying the patterns of small almost-round leaves scattered across the ground. They made a pattern there, a spiraling curve, inviting him into its complex order. By the way he smiled and wrapped Dad tight in a hug, he thinks Papa did too. He has not shown such understanding since.

Because it is Thursday, Kako spends the morning with Elizabeth. She sits at her desk, reading on her computer tablet, while Kako sits beneath, between her legs and the smooth metal panels of its surface. Elizabeth's office is glass and too bright, too many people moving in the Large Room below with the ring containing the artificial ocean. Sometimes there are shouts. Once there was blood.

On that day, Kako screamed and screamed until Ronon came up to comfort him, dirty and covered in a strange smell, but predictable. Dad was absent for 4.7 days after that, and walked unevenly on three legs for 32 more. Kako slept in Teyla's rooms, tucked against her side. She smelled of the flowers on the mainland, and each night, when he listened to her dreams, he saw an old toothless man playing a flute.

Kako loves Teyla almost as much as he loves Atlantis.

He slips off his soft leather sandals and presses his toes into the floor, feeling the metal warm beneath him.

Atlantis speaks in colors, each system a different shade, melting together where they overlap, glowing when they need help, balancing, moving, complex, but orderly. Her subroutines are sharp but they waste nothing. They never shout and they always ask permission. They whisper to him, tell him all manners of secrets. Atlantis knows the location of every being within her confines. She cares for them as they move within her. She knows the waves and the stars and a thousand worlds full of beautiful things. He thinks she might know music too, but she is waiting for something first. He does not know what, only that she is patient.

Kako passes the morning learning about the Wraith. He does not know how to fear them, only that they grow, they breed and hunt and fly in cycles like the moon. Atlantis remembers them all.

The Wraith were predictable before Dad came and changed their patterns, made them all come alive too early, too many, too near. Perhaps it is Dad that made Papa so unpredictable as well.

On Thursdays, Kako will eat lunch with Papa. Today it will be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with fried tuttle root and coleslaw. For dessert, Kako will have lime Jell-o. Papa will eat between 1 and 3 chocolate Powerbars. After this, he will go to the gym to watch Teyla and Sergeant Stackhouse, Sergeant Parsons, Sergeant Houser, and Lieutenant Parker practice stick-dancing. The dance is new each day, but Teyla's movements are graceful and predictable. The others, he can tolerate. And when their training is done, he and Teyla will sit and she will show him images of her childhood. He will show her the wonderful things Atlantis has told him.

Kako likes Thursdays.

But today is different, because 32 minutes before when Elizabeth will take him down to the lab to find Papa, Kako feels the wormhole opening. Atlantis leaps, her heart beating faster, like Kako's after running.

Normally, when this happens, he stays beneath Elizabeth's desk until someone comes to get him, but not today. Today he feels something different. Atlantis is excited. She dances, bringing images to his mind, flashes. Everything is orange.

Kako presses his nose up to the glass of the window, refusing to be distracted by the fine lines the mist of his breath forms there. But then Dad and Ronon come flying through, disrupting the order of the perfectly pattered floor as they lay splayed out, panting, upon it.

Then a creature follows them. It has long white hair and pale blue skin. It looks up at Kako with bright yellow eyes, movements slow and ordered.

Then the Uniforms bellow are circling it, like the feral dogs of Pet'rach that Atlantis told Kako about on the fourth of July two years ago. The staccato blasts from their weapons sound like Stravinsky. But that is not what makes Kako scream.

He hears it in his head, like the pictures Teyla shows to him. It is dying.

He races out across the causeway, a making for the steps. He wish he knew the words to tell them to stop, stop hurting it. Stop, it hungers. Please.

But then Ronon catches him, wrapping him in thick arms and running with him, even as he kicks and screams. He runs all the way until they are in Papa's lab. But he doesn't want to see Papa and his flailing hands and his 8,342 kinds of unpredictability.

He screams until his throat is dry and Papa is screeching at him to stop, to tell him what's the matter, to please, please, calm down. Why won't he just listen to him? Talk to him? He lives with him. Why can't he just be a normal loud, annoying brat, with few requirements? Why? Why does he have to do this? Why won't he shut up?

But he can't. Because there was something. There was a life, 11,785 years complex, seen 347 worlds, written 78 operas, fallen in love for 3,960 years, slept for 4,326. There was a life, a complex order in the chaos that he knows is the universe and in a second it was gone. He felt it, like Stravinsky and thunder and the last drop of rain to fall in a summer storm.

But Ronon is a rock against him, and anger drowns out Papa's shouts and Kako cannot quiet until he sees Dad standing there in the doorway, opening his arms to him, Atlantis hums with his presence so Kako gives him permission to lead him down the hallway to infirmary.

Kako does not like the infirmary. Nor does he like the Doctor there who pokes him with needles and asks him questions he cannot answer and speaks to Dad about too much radiation exposure, the effect of viruses, too much stress, risks and things he wished they'd thought of. What he dislikes the most is the way the Doctor looks at him – the same way Papa looks at a machine he cannot make glow.

He does not like the infirmary, but he sees the tight lines of pain on Dad's face and hears Bach, dancing melodies, deep and hurtful somehow. They must find the doctor.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Dad says, letting Kako rest against his right side as Nurse Walker touches and pulls at his left wrist. "Did you hear it?"

Kako nods.

"I'm sorry about that too." Dad sounds guilty, wistful like Brahms. "The Wraith are pretty scary, huh?"

Kako shakes his head.

"No? Well they scare me," Dad says, shifting off the bed so that he can move to one of the machines that Atlantis uses to take care of her charges. It cannot fix Kako, that he knows.

And it cannot fix Dad, either, apparently, for they must wrap his wrist in bendable glass. Kako dislikes the irregularity immediately, but it only sticks to his fingers when he tries to pull it off.

Dad laughs. "Settle, kiddo. Let's play a game."

Kako nods, even as he feels Atlantis, uncomfortable around him. She too hungers, he realizes. She too is complex and beautiful and life-wise. But he pushes her excitement aside, urging her to bring up the picture of their last game. The board is three levels of six-pointed stars.

"Super Chinese Checkers, it is," Dad says with a laugh.

A thought moves his first piece. Kako follows suit.

But then Papa storms in, the board disappearing before Kako even has time to think. He shies away from the flying of Papa's hands, like butterflies. Terrifying.

"Wraith? A broken wrist? I thought we agreed you were only going on safe missions from now on! I thought you had promised not to leave me alone with . . . John, he can't live without you. Don't you get it? If something happens to you . . . he won't even hug me, John." Papa finishes with a sigh.

Dad opens his other side, the one Kako's not clinging to and hugs Papa to him. Dad is a bridge between the two of them, just like Atlantis is a bridge between him and Dad.

"I brought you a present," Dad says, kissing Papa's forehead.

"Yeah, you came back mostly intact."

"Better. Bring Papa my pack, will you, kiddo?"

Kako nods and walks over to Dad's pack. He opens it and inside . . . orange. Atlantis dances anxiously at the back of his mind. Vivaldi. Summer.

Kako clasps the orange to his chest, breathing deep. Images of hallways filled with light, of the bright sparkling of the shield around them, a thousand toys, fountains, pools, great concert halls, sunlight. He gasps.

"Is that?" Papa breathes. His voice is slowed with reverence. Maybe . . . maybe . . . he understands.

"Yes, it is."

Then Papa is up and moving, trying to grab the Potentia from Kako's hands.

He screeches and pulls away.

"Oh, come on, hand over the ZedPM," Papa complains.

No.

Papa snaps his fingers.

"You are a bad little boy. Give me the ZedPM then go to your room!" he shouts. Beethoven.

"Rodney," Dad cautions. "Kako, will you please give Papa the ZPM? I promise he won't hurt it."

Kako shakes his head.

"Please," Papa asks again. His eyes are the color of the ocean.

And then Atlantis nudges. She smiles. She accepts, even though Papa has never spoken to her, understood her the way Kako and Dad do.

With shaking hands, he opens his arms, careful not to touch Papa's big hands.

Even if Atlantis trusts him, Kako does not. So he follows him through the corridors down to the lab. He watches him as he speaks anxiously with Radek and Kavanagh and Simpson, pulling his earphones from his pockets to drown out their unpredictable chatter. Elizabeth comes. She asks Kako for a hug, but he is too engrossed in what Papa is doing to the Potentia.

It is a long while before Papa picks it up, carries it down the corridors, Kako running to keep up as he follows Papa to a room where he has never been, to a raised platform, like a stage. A hole opens up and Papa lifts the Potentia.

Kako steps closer, mesmerized.

"Trust me, kid, you'll like this." Papa is smiling now, his face a thousand up and downs of grand scales. Chopin.

The Potentia descends and . . . Atlantis sings and it is the song of the stars.

Kako grabs for Papa, holding him tight in his small arms. Papa is broad like Ronon but warmer, soft. He holds Kako with the same reverence as he gifted Atlantis with her voice. And Kako realizes that though Dad is the one Atlantis loves, Papa is the one she's been waiting for.

And here, settled against his chest, wrapped up in the rise and fall of the music, its melodies quiet and alien and perfect, Kako realizes that the soft patter of Papa's heartbeat against is chest is indeed predictable.

FIN